Typically, a goal in the manufacturing of electronic components and in the design of printed circuit board placement of the electronic components is to minimize the height of the devices above the surface of the printed circuit board. This allows printed circuit boards in an electronic assembly to be mounted in closely spaced side-by-side relation. Thus, it is standard to mount the large area surfaces of the electronic components parallel to the printed circuit board surface. Flatpack components and surface mount components aid in minimizing the maximum height of a printed circuit board.
One difficulty with the aim of achieving high printed circuit board density involves the electrical communication between the boards. Conducting signals from one board to another requires a relatively long signal path. This is detrimental to low-inductance, high-speed operation of circuitry.
Moreover, low profile design of electronic components sometimes works against miniaturization. At times printed circuit boards do not need to be closely spaced. In fact, many electronic assemblies require only a single printed circuit board. In these applications mounting electronic components parallel to the printed circuit board limits the number of components that can be mounted on a particular board.
Devices and methods for achieving a higher component density on a given amount of circuit board surface area are known. Cook U.S. Pat. No. 4,730,238 teaches a double sided mounting module for surface mount integrated circuit packages. The packages are connected to opposite sides of the module in a conventional manner. The module is then soldered to a printed circuit board so that the module and the packages extend vertically from the board. Murphy U.S. Pat. No. 3,899,719 teaches a dual in-line package and terminal having bent leads which allow the package to be mounted vertically from a horizontal printed circuit board. The inventions of Cook and Murphy provide an improvement in the use of a given amount of printed circuit board surface area, but the packaging and the intermediate printed circuit boards require a routing of signal lines that is less than optimal. Reduction of the length of signal lines enhances the speed and performance of circuitry. The vertical extensions of the signal lines taught by Cook and Murphy elongate the signal lines.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an electronic component which may be attached directly to a conventional printed circuit board or other substrate in a manner which both reduces the required board surface area and increases the speed and performance of the overall circuit.